Deployment linked to child's behavior

BOSTON, Nov. 4 (UPI) -- Children ages 3 to 5 with a parent deployed to a war zone exhibit more behavior problems than peers whose parents are home, U.S. researchers say.

Dr. Molinda M. Chartrand of the Boston University School of Medicine and colleagues studied 169 families with children from 18 months to age 5 who were enrolled in military childcare centers at a large Marine base in 2007.

Parents and childcare providers each completed a behavior problem assessment that analyzed anxiousness, depression and withdrawal, as well as attention problems and aggression behaviors.

Parents also completed a questionnaire to measure their own level of depression.

The study, published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, found that of the 169 families, 33 percent had a deployed parent, with an average deployment length of 3.9 months. Children age 3 and older who had a deployed parent had significantly higher scores on measures of externalizing and overall behavior problems than children of the same age without a deployed parent.

"Such reported differences might be dismissed as distorted perceptions of the child by the distressed non-deployed parent; however, the association remained after controlling for parental stress and depressive symptoms," the study authors said in a statement. "In addition, childcare providers reported similarly elevated scores."